Mozilla to extend Firefox 3.1 beta cycle

Mozilla's developers are discussing the possibility of adding a new milestone release to the Firefox 3.1 development schedule. The new milestone, which will be beta 3, will give the developers more time to iron out bugs and ensure that the web browser is sufficiently robust before moving into the release candidate stage.

In a message posted to the planning mailing list, Firefox development director Mike Beltzner proposed adding the new beta milestone and also suggested intensive bug triaging efforts to reevaluate the classification of remaining blockers and determine which issues should be given the highest priority. He also notes that adding an additional beta release will give testers and add-on developers a greater opportunity to supply feedback.

The second beta release, which is scheduled for early December, is intended to provide sufficient API stability for add-on developers who want to begin updating their extensions. This point was discussed at length and the consensus seems to be that all of the functionality in beta 2 will be included in the final release unless there are significant unforeseen problems.

Firefox 3.1 will include a number of significant features, including some that were originally planned for 3.0 and deferred for various reasons. One of the most significant is the new TraceMonkey JavaScript interpreter, which will significantly improve the performance of script execution. Another major feature is the new private browsing mode, which will allow users to browse without having their history or other data tracked by the browser.

I've been testing the latest nightly builds and I'm impressed with the progress so far. In addition to some of these major features, there are also some excellent minor improvements, such as support for linking in the source viewer.